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IVE
     
    T he cemetery was closed, a possibility Julia hadn’t considered. She supposed it made sense. Tyler and his buddies from the basketball team had once gone on a scavenger hunt in which “tombstone” had been on the list. A couple of other teams had brought back Halloween decorations, but Tyler had brought back the real thing loaded in the back of his buddy Rob’s pickup. She and Tyler had argued about it.
    “That’s sick!”
    “It’s not like it’s your mother’s tombstone.”
    “No, it’s some little kid’s. Take it back.”
    “This kid died in, like, 1930. Even her parents are dead by now. There’s no one left who cares.”
    That’s when she had started crying. Dying was bad enough, but she couldn’t bear the idea that someday there would be no one left who cared.
    Now, staring beyond the iron bars into the graveyard, she shivered. “I still care, Mom,” she muttered. “I’ve come to see you.” She was sure the reason the cemetery was locked was to prevent partying and vandalism. She had no intention of doing either. She just wanted to talk to her mom, silly as the idea made her feel. She didn’t know why the need felt so strong.
It must be all that research with Bertel.
In spite of her doubts, she wondered if they were on the brink of glimpsing some sort of life after death—nothing spooky or supernatural, just simple energy matter. She stared up at the locked gate, which was maybe eight feet tall. She whispered, “Ummm, Mom, if you’re really still around, could you maybe help me with the gate?” Nothing.
    Right, there’s no such thing as ghosts.
    She heaved a sigh and grabbed two of the bars. She wedged one sandal between the bars, grabbed first one crossbar, then another, and hauled herself over the spikes at the top of the gate.
Careful,
she thought,
wouldn’t want to have the cops find you stuck this way.
Austin’s face flashed through her mind and literally threw her off balance. She caught herself before she slipped, then slowly lowered herself down the other side and dropped the last two feet to the ground. Her ankle twisted under her, and she grunted in pain. She stood, tested it, and, finding it only slightly sore, limped into the darkened cemetery.
    She hoped she would be able to find the fat palm tree in the dark. Palm trees in a cemetery struck her as undignified somehow. But then, there hadn’t been much dignity in her mother’s death. She remembered the coma at the end, her mother’s abdomen swollen as if she were pregnant, her beautiful blonde hair completely gone, her eye sockets like bruises, and her bones protruding so much that Julia could almost make out the shape of the skeleton that her mother was now becoming six-feet-under somewhere in this graveyard.
    She found the palm tree and turned to find the second tombstone on the right. It was so dark, she couldn’t see her mother’s name. She sat cross-legged facing the tombstone and traced the lettering with her index finger. The grounds must have been watered recently, because she could feel dampness through her jeans. She shivered, though the night was warm. Julia half-expected to feel her mother’s hands draping a sweater over her shoulders.
    “Mom?” Her voice was low, but it seemed loud in the silence of the cemetery. “I was going to bring flowers, but I left them in Dad’s car. Mom, I really need to talk to you. I need some advice. I’m worried that maybe I might have gotten involved in another experiment I shouldn’t have.” She took a deep breath and waited.
    The last real conversation she and her mother had was about the high school science fair. High school had presented way too many opportunities for humiliation, but this went beyond that. Her mother had already been bedridden by that point, and she had hesitated to talk about what had happened. But it had been big news. Police had gotten involved. It wasn’t as if she could hide it, even though her mother had stopped watching TV. She’d sat